Wind Turbine Cleaning – How do they do that?

These generators have to cope with more than just the weather. Apart from the impact of rain and snow, they also have to contend with dust, sand, moss, Insects, oil contamination and pollution.

Keeping Wind Turbines clean and free of debris makes sure that everything runs at peak efficiency because individual components can perform at their best – for example the blades will then have less wind resistance and clean gearboxes run more smoothly.

A clean wind turbine, apart from working better and looking smarter, also ensures that there is less ground contamination.

So who does the cleaning? How do they get up there? What do they do?

Trained professionals climb up with ladders and ropes to gain safe access to exterior of the tower, control rooms and turbine blades. The checks are exhaustive and apart from cleaning the dirt on the blades through scrubbing or power washing, will also encompass checking grease fitting, gear oil, brake pads, electronic systems and the tightness of all the bolts – quite a task.

Extreme Simple Green is one of the industry’s preferred products because of 6 key points:

Extreme Simple Green by companies such as Mitsubishi Power Systems, EnXco, AES and Iberdrola for a variety of tasks including cleaning and degreasing of propeller blades, gearboxes, hydraulic oil spills and leaks, etc. Extreme at 1:3 is the most common dilution and cleaning is done by spray bottle, parts washers, pressure washers and depending how big the turbines are…by heavy duty spraying from helicopters.